Weekly Vote & Drama-que!

[aggienaut]

   It's that time of the week! LJ Idol polls are up, and that means its also time for my weekly drama-que (polls will be closed already by our usual time of Sat morning). So throw some OMG-weiners and WTF-burgers on the grill, crack open a nice cold can of STFU and pull up a chair!

[Poll #1359752]
See also my homegame entry: Dream Home

Recommendations
   As before, the standard of recommendations is not "what entries are well written enough that someone with a feeling of civic duty to vote for meritious idol entries will be impressed" but rather "what entries are good enough that the uninterested blog bystander (blogstander?) will find it a worthwhile read?" These two things are very different standards
   Every week idolists like to fall over themselves going on about how great EVERYONE was and its so hard to decide who NOT to vote for. I'll give it to you straight, I have the opposite problem. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of really great entries. If this was short story idol I'd be falling over myself to recommend Darkprism's entry. And on pure merit I think Alexpgp's entry is, as always, flawless -- but I can't honestly tell the uninterested reader that there's enough of interest to them in it to make it worth my recommending it to them (but if you're even slightly less than entirely uninterested, it really is a good entry).
   Basically, if you're bored and want to read some good entries, there are indeed a number of good entries. But you have to be in the mood for something more than five pages or an entry that might not interest you personally but is written impressively well.

   But I can recommend...
1. superhappytime's entry: The Best Thing...

Weekly Drama-Que
   Okay. I was wrong. I spoke too soon. I'll admit it.
   Last week I noted that there had heretofore been no drama of any note. Almost immediately after, shit started to go down.

   Someone posted on sf_drama urging people to vote for everyone but RM. And apparently readers of the community did indeed take the advice, and everyone else in idol rocketed up past rm. What's more, a lot of the SF Drama commenters seemed to recognize and dislike her from past dramatic episodes.
   Since then there has been some kvetching about what a deplorable occurance this was. I disagree.
   When feeling criticized, rm frequently notes that she believes people don't like her because she has a huge friends list that votes for her, and that this is fair (and the dislike unfounded) because her huge friends list really is only representative of that a lot of people outside of Idol like her writing. I completely agree with this sentiment (it helps that I have 451 friends-of so that reasoning allows me to feel awesome myself). However I disagree with the first part: in "why I don't like RM" I haven't really heard "because she has a big friends list that votes for her."
   But just like its totally fair for people to bring in people who like their writing outside idol to come vote for them, the flip side of that exact same coin is that it follows then that its totally fair for people who DISLIKE someone based on their writing outside idol to vote against them. Writing, or behaviour, apparently, and I think that's entirely legitimate. Apparently rm managed to make herself disliked by a large portion of the blogosphere by her past actions.
   One thing I've enjoyed about LJ Idol is all the existential discussions that it's caused people to have about what makes good writing, what deserves to be voted for. Really everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I think most people vote for writing that looks like any kind of good writing. As I've noted, I look for writing that would appeal to the casual reader of blogs -- I believe awareness of audience is fundamentally important. I think if "LJ Idol" aspires to be more than just a small backwater community, if it aspires to actually be, literally, LJ Idol, it is important that votes ARE allowed to be effected by people's influence (positive or negative) outside of the community itself. Additionally, being a citizen of the blogosphere is more than just being a good writer, and if someone has made enemies through a previous reign of banning/deletion/freezing-of-comments terror, I think thats a wholly legitimate reason to vote against them.

Comments

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

So who do you have to screw to get a recommendation here? LOL

I think it's important to note that actually a "noble" (I don't know this person so I cannot comment on their true intentions) cause backfired last week. The post before it was edited either had a comment or an icon asking people to vote for brightflashes and against rm, but only when said person realised how badly this reflected on brightflashes and how it put her in an uncomfortable spot, did they ask everyone to vote for everyone BUT rm.

That said - it's Idol. To give an example: Belgium once sent a girl who couldn't sing 2 straight notes after one another to the European Song Festival (which is nothing more than a kitsch gathering where neighbouring countries vote for each other) ... the only reason said "singer" made it through the televoting was because a) the audience of the TV show was pretty low and b) she had called upon her church community to vote for her.

Since then when it's Wallonia's turn to send a singer to the Festival, they have a professional jury. Flanders, where the audience is large enough so that a church community will not have such a decisive influence, still does televoting.


Just a note.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha thats funny about the European Song Festival malarkey. She must have "posted the polls" in her church. ;D

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

LOL well that's exactly what she did :P

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

That actually kind of occured to me as a potential LJ Idol "trick" someone might be doing -- if they lived in dorms or something where there were a number of other people with LJs about they could post a reminded to vote on some kind of physical bulletin board IRL and we'd have no way of figuring it out! O=

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

LOL but really, would you do that in front of everyone? I sure don't want anyone IRL to know, but that's mostly because I keep my journal pretty hidden.

Blogshame

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

True true! Thats why everyone at work doesn't know I have a blog. In fact, I was frightened the gig was up when IT WAS MENTIONED IN THE NEWSPAPER (the OC Weekly thing), but none of them reacted, and I honestly think its because they don't know what a blog IS.

And of course I haven't let a peep out about LJ Idol in the lj my real friends know about. (=

Re: Blogshame

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

LOL yeah I would really not be happy if family or IRL friends found this blog. I briefly had (well still have) a blogger, then wordpress blog in Dutch but some asshole extreme right politician gave out my real name on his blog because I hurt his feelings with a post so yeah. Now my real name is all over the net (doesn't help I share my name with a Belgian diplomat hah) but I'd rather not connect it to LJ lol

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Also (in re recs and constructive criticism), your paragraphs were too long :D

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

Hopefully it will go through this time ...


I really should make it a point to write/post earlier (if I survive another week that is) because things like this are interesting ... I actually thought they were on the shortish side and didn't want to start a new one every other phrase.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Incidently I was just thinking I really ought to read people's entries earlier (I usually wait till the poll is posted so I can just read and vote at the same time) so that my feedback can actually be useful. (=

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

Yeah but if I write with half an hour to spare on the deadline ... you could be speedwriter supreme and still not have enough time :P

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Haha daaamn you cut it close (=

[agirlnamedluna.livejournal.com]

Well I totally worded that wrong - what I wanted to say is that you had no bad intentions towards brightflashes when you posted it, I did realise you didn't particularly care much for rm - but while it could be perceived that at the same time you were trying to shine a negative light on brightflashes, it was not your intent at all.